Continuing our ongoing effort to get caught up, here’s a batch of pictures from fall 2008. Highlights include Julia’s first day of Junior K; Halloween, featuring the hand-me-down chicken costume’s third deployment; and Thanksgiving.
Some of these photos were taken with my late, not particularly lamented phone, so their quality is a little below par.
More old pictures, these dating back to our trip to Chicago in August 2008.
We have pictures to post (albeit old ones), but before we get to them, I wanted to relay a story that will probably be funny to all parties concerned in a few years, but which, for the moment, we generally avoid discussing around the house.
People who visit from the Midwest are generally a little surprised at the way schools are constructed out here in the Bay Area. Before we had kids, I always thought they looked more like minimum-security prisons than proper schools: small clusters of low-lying, beige buildings surrounded by asphalt playgrounds and chain link fences. There’s generally no interior structure at all: classroom doors open to the outdoors, rather than hallways, and students go outdoors when they move between classrooms or go to the office, library or bathroom.
This last point threw my mother for a loop. “What do they do during winter?” she wondered. “What if it’s raining and the kids need to use the toilet?”
All of which brings us to our story. Now that Julia is in first grade, she’s no longer escorted to the YMCA daycare facility as part of a large group: the first graders are dismissed from class and make their way over there more or less on their own. A few weeks ago, she decided to take a quick detour through the girls’ bathroom, which is between her class and Y Care. There were a couple of other kids using the facilities, and Julia found a stall in which to do her business.
There are a couple of things that are important to understand about Julia before we go on. First, to put it delicately, she is a bit leisurely when she uses the bathroom. She just likes to do things at her own pace. Second, despite the fact that she is loud, outspoken and generally a ham when she’s in a comfortable situation, she can also be introverted and shy when she’s not. She’s gotten quite a bit better in this respect over the last couple years, but she still hesitates to speak up from time to time.
While Julia was taking her time, doing her thing, the girls in the other stalls finished up and left. Then, some time later, a janitor came in. I’m not sure exactly what he was doing or how long he was there—it was the end of the school day, so it seems probable he was tidying up and didn’t stay long—but he finished his work and made a point of asking if anyone else was there. Julia, being Julia, didn’t answer, so the janitor left, turned off the lights and—remember that everything at Julia’s school opens to outside—locked the door behind him.
It’s unclear exactly what happened next. It’s my understanding that pounding on the door and screaming were involved. Julia couldn’t have been stuck in there too long, because the Y Care people weren’t alarmed about the fact that she was late. Eventually, another maintenance worker—a girl maintenance worker, Julia is careful to point out—heard Julia’s cries and let her out. She got a personal escort over to daycare and no permanent harm was done. Julia learned an important lesson (“When someone asks you if you’re there, say, ‘Yes.’”) and we got a fun story out of the experience.
I promised pictures, so here you go. These are from the summer of 2008 and show the kids’ swimming lessons, a visit from Grandma Flack and Joe’s first real haircut.
It’s a bit cliché to say that it’s hard to believe a child has reached a certain age, as though she went to bed a toddler and woke up in junior high. This isn’t really the case for us and Julia—or, perhaps, for parents in general. Sure, sometimes it seems like it was just a few months ago that we brought her home from the hospital, or just last week that she was trying to make sense of Cheerios. Some days, though, I can feel each and every one of the last 2,191 days in my muscles and bones; on days like those, it seems hard to believe that we’ve got another 4,400 or so more in front of us.
Either way, Julia has given us a truckload of memories over the last six years, and there’s no more concrete evidence of that gift than the fact that we now have more than 11,000 photos on our computer (mental note: back up computer). Admittedly, we’re a little behind in terms of actually publishing them, but here’s a step in the right direction: pictures from Julia’s blowout birthday celebration yesterday, with some bonus shots from the first day of school.
We started out with the first soccer game of the season at 9:00 in the morning. Some of us were a little groggy, but at least it prevented us from deviating too far from the weekday sleep schedule Friday night. Julia’s team won, which is hardly the point, but it was a bit of a nice change: they’ve now won more regular season games than they did all of last year.
As an added bonus, one of Julia’s oldest friends, Molly Gosling, is on her team. Julie and Molly’s mom were both in the same mothers’ group when the kids were newborns, and both girls went to Action Day up until preschool. When they were about three, Molly moved to a different school and Julia stuck with Action Day for another couple years, so they haven’t seen as much of each other lately. Thus, it’s a treat for them to get together twice a week for practice and games.
After soccer, we took the kids to Happy Hollow with some of Julia’s friends from school. I’d never been to Happy Hollow before, so it was an educational experience. It’s a combination petting zoo, playground and amusement park, and most of the activities and rides are aimed at kids under the age of 8, so it was right in our group’s wheelhouse. Julia and Joe rode a roller coaster for the first time; Julia loved it, but I was actually fairly surprised that Joe was game. He didn’t hate it, but certainly wasn’t up for a second ride. Instead, he insisted that we go on Danny the Dragon or, as he called it, the “dragon train,” which was essentially a chain of wagons pulled along a wooded path past little displays depicting scenes from children’s literature at 2 miles per hour by a golf cart disguised as a large, green dragon. It was definitely more Joe’s speed.
We took a short break when we got home from Happy Hollow—the kids were fine, but I was dead on my feet. Then, Molly, Phoebe and Zoe came over for a sleepover. We went to McDonald’s for dinner (Julia’s choice), ate some cake, and watched Enchanted. It ended up being a pretty late night, but the kids were pretty well-behaved, considering there were five of them squeezed into the bedroom. Sadly, Molly decided she wanted to go home around 11:45, so her mother came by to pick her up—luckily, they live just a few blocks away. She probably ended up sleeping better than the rest of the girls, considering they were all awake, predictably enough, by 6:30 this morning.
Julia spent the last couple weeks settling in at school. She’s very enthused about the idea of being a first grader, but sometimes has a little trouble with accepting the reality of what that entails. That is to say, she’s still having some of the same problems she had last year regarding focusing in class and getting her work done when she’s supposed to. She’s not having any issues with the actual difficulty of the classwork, which we’re taking as a good sign; and she loves her teacher, Mrs. Peters. Rather, at times she’s just a little unclear on her responsibilities and our expectations.
Julie and I are racking our brains trying to figure out how to motivate her without dampening her spirit and enthusiasm. She’s fundamentally a good girl (of course, what kind of parent would I be if I felt otherwise?), but we need to help her understand that people are going to judge her based on how she behaves—she’s not going to make it on charm and looks alone, real-life examples from contemporary American society notwithstanding. If nothing else, we don’t have to worry about parenting being boring.
As part of the plan to address these concerns, we’ve decided to take a big step and start giving the kids an allowance: 25¢ for each year of age, or $1.50 for Julia and $1.00 for Joe each week. The exact amount will be adjusted based on their behavior at home and at school and whether they help out with their chores around the house, which largely involve feeding Maggie and helping me pick up apples in the yard. I’m looking forward to them mowing the lawn, cleaning the gutters and bringing me drinks by this time next year.
The other big news is that Joe is all set to start Junior K for real this coming week. He’s been busing over to Amber for the last month or so, but they’ve still been doing fun summer camp activities. On Monday, he gets his first real dose of school, complete with desks, school supplies and homework. He has the same teacher Julia did for Junior K, Ms. Aamoth (though she was Ms. Powell at the time), and a bunch of his preschool friends are in his class, so it won’t be a complete change of surroundings, but it’ll be a shift nonetheless. Knowing Joe, however, he’ll probably take it with aplomb.
After a long, hectic summer, there’s nothing like a two-week family vacation to slow things down and get everyone into a relaxed frame of mind heading into the school year, right? OK, maybe not, but we tried. And we have pictures.
Things got off to a rollicking start when we found that we didn’t have any hot water in the master bathroom the morning of the trip. The hot water heater was completely kaput, and to add to the excitement, the drain in the front bathroom was sufficiently stuck that taking more than a five-minute shower would result in a flood.
Those minor difficulties overcome—or at least deferred—we started out with a week-long stop in Chicago, where we visited my parents and went to my 20-year high school reunion. In addition to the reunion proper, there were Alumni Weekend activities, complete with kids’ play area, at IMSA on Saturday. Julia and Joseph were surprisingly unimpressed with the place where Daddy spent his formative years, though Joe did get a big kick out of the fact that there was an elevator in the school building: I probably rode it more times that afternoon than I had the entire three years I attended school there. The kids also insisted on climbing on and around the various pieces of art installed on the school grounds, proving that some things transcend generations.
While we were in Elk Grove, the kids became fascinated by the bike trails in and around the forest preserve and requested that we go for a walk in the “deep, dark forest.” Mom and I obliged them, though in hindsight, it would have been a better idea to drive into the forest preserve and walk from there, rather than haul both of them to and from the house. If it weren’t for my old wagon, which we uncovered in the garage, we never would have made it.
From Chicago, we headed to Nebraska for Julie’s reunion, which was conveniently scheduled for the weekend after mine—it helped that Julie was the one doing the organizing for her class. Everyone was very excited to see Grandma Flack’s new house in Norfolk, and the kids were especially looking forward to sleeping in the basement. Joe only fell down the stairs once, so I considered that leg of the trip to be a rousing success.
I left for home the day after the reunion, while Julie and the kids stayed in Nebraska for a few additional days, which gave me a bit of time to get caught up on work and arrange for a plumber to come by and fix our bathing problems.
Other than the trip, the other big news is that Julia has finally gotten the hang of riding her bike. The weekend before we left, she was able to make it all the way around the block, stopping only once. She still needs a little help getting going from a full stop, but she’s well on her way to achieving a new level of independence and mobility. I only hope that the world is ready.
Things have been pretty much normal for the last couple months, which is to say: hectic. Julia finished up Kindergarten in June, and although she loved it, it’s safe to say that she’s not in line to win high honors for her demeanor and discipline this year. She remains, as always, Julia. She’s smart, funny, passionate and energetic. She’s also mischievous, sensitive, impulsive and a bit of a ham. Her first grade teacher isn’t going to know what hit him.
On the subject of school, as you can see in the picture above, Joe has started busing over to Primary Plus, where he’ll be attending Junior K in the fall. We had planned to start sending him over there in August, so that he’d be comfortable and acclimated by the start of the school year, but decided to move it up a month for social reasons.
Because the class in front of him at preschool was a little on the large side, Joe and some classmates were held up in a younger kids’ classroom a bit longer than usual. Although this wasn’t ideal, it was perfectly OK: Joe loved his teachers, Ms. Pat and Ms. Raven, and a lot of his friends were in the same boat. The only real downside was that two of his best buddies, Mason and Joshua, had already moved up.
When summer came, things opened up a bit. Kids in the Pre-K room moved up and out to summer camps and other big-kid destinations, and spaces freed up in Room D, the class ahead of Joe’s. This allowed the administrators to move a bunch of kids from Joe’s classroom, Room C, up to Room D, and a new batch of kids into Room C from the first preschool class, Room A.
So far, so good. However, in order to minimize disruption for both the teachers and the students, the administrators decided to keep the kids who are moving over to Junior K this fall in their current classrooms: that way, they won’t have to make two transitions in the space of a few months. Unfortunately, this left Joe and a few other kids in a bit of a strange place. Children who were six months younger than Joe were being promoted ahead of him, and new kids that were significantly younger than him—two-and-a-half years old, as compared to Joe at age four—were moving into his class. This didn’t seem like a great arrangement, so we decided to move Joe over to Primary Plus this month instead of waiting.
Having turned four, of course, Joe was due for an annual checkup last month. He’s still tracking more or less in the middle of the normal range in terms of height and weight, so we’ve got no concerns on those fronts. A couple of shots were on the agenda for this appointment, and Joe was a trooper, as usual. He insisted on sitting on Julie’s lap, but didn’t scream or make a scene: he handled the first shot without making a sound and merely exclaimed, “Ouch!” after the second. Then he asked for a lollipop.
We have lots of pictures and videos lined up: baseball, Joe’s big show, day trips and other summer fun. With luck, we’ll get around to posting them over the next few weeks.
It was opening day of the baseball season today: Julia is playing her second year, and this is Joe’s first time. Both kids ended up on American League teams this year, Julia on the sadly politically correct Rays, and Joe on the significantly less so Indians.
Julia’s game started first, at 10:00, and she got her season off to a fast start by smacking a clean single into right field on the first pitch she saw. Things went a little bit downhill from there, and she broke into tears because no balls were hit to her when her team was in the field. Her coaches handled the situation graciously, however, and made sure everyone got a chance.
Julia went on to get another hit her second time at bat and somehow, despite her earlier histrionics, got the game ball for the day.
After Julia’s game ended, there was an hour before Joe’s started. Seeing as the fields are at the Primary Plus campus, about twenty minutes from home, we were pretty much stuck there for the duration. Had we a little more foresight, we would have packed a refreshing, healthy picnic lunch and relaxed in the balmy spring weather. We didn’t plan that far ahead, however, so we killed a little time on the playground and peeked into the classroom windows, since Joe will be attending Junior K there next fall.
Joe’s game started at noon, and he was very excited because two of his best friends from preschool—Mason and Joshua—are on his team. They managed to stop chasing each other around long enough to actually play the game, and Joe had a blast, though I think he was looking forward to the snacks after the game as much as anything else.
They don’t let the coaches pitch to the kids in Joe’s league, so everyone hit off the tee, and Joe managed to do so without serious incident. He had a little trouble getting onto the field to play defense, especially for the second inning—hats and gloves were thrown, and the words “I don’t want to” were uttered more than once—but when he did, he was all over the place, to the point that the coaches had to remind him that it would be really nice if he let the other kids have their turns getting the ball, and even more nice not to take it out of their gloves when they did.
When all was said and done, Joe got a game ball, too, so both kids received a nice reward despite displaying somewhat less-than-perfect teamwork. Mason and Joe then spent a good quarter hour poking at a tree with sticks, and told me that they were making owl cake. If someone could tell me what that means, I’d very much appreciate it.
Enjoy the photos from the long—but fun—morning.
We don’t have much new to post at the moment—swimming lessons are done, and baseball is just getting started—so it seemed like a good idea to get caught up on some of the pictures we haven’t gotten around to uploading. Like, for example, these photos from around Joe’s second birthday… just in time for his fourth birthday this June.
There’s also a short video of the kids playing in the wading pool. Looking at it now, two years later, it’s remarkable to see how little their interactions have changed.
Occasional Dispatches from San Jose 